Crust - Examining artists approaches to clay surfaces

Ceramics an evolutionary tradition

The word Crust as described in The Concise Macquarie Dictionary states:
"The exterior portion of the earth, accessible to examination."

Andrea Hylands

Crust conjures texture, character, earth and something mysterious (perhaps precious) lying beneath. Many works in the exhibition rely predominantly on the Crust - the outer surface of clay and glaze. Other works go beneath the surface, examining the translucency or whiteness of the material. Some are highly decorated and others minimalist in approach. The diverse nature of ceramics as a medium gives the ceramic artist many options at many points to project their personal voice through the volatile and fragile nature of clays. This exhibition delves into some of the thoughts, processes and materials used by a small number of ceramic artists from the permanent collection. Whether pure white formalism as with Martha Zettler's Bone China Form 1, or impurities of iron specks and crusty glazes in Owen Rye's Wood fired form or Jeff Mincham's fumed raku Ceremonial vessel. From the cheeky wit and colourful energy of Pru Morrison's The Johnnies, Barbara Swarbrick's Dancer's vase and Sandra Taylors Platter to the more formal wood fired approach of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott in Still life.

Greg Daly's lush glazes, flecks of gold leaf and dazzling red enamels in Quad Vase contrasts with the soft delicate perfect imperfections of Steven Goldate's Bowl with iron sulphate decoration. Les Blakebrough's Unglazed porcelain bowl examines the use of metal salts on the pure white surface of a wheel thrown bowl. Like Goldate's Bowl Blakebrough paints his with metal salts iron sulphate and the like to achieve a soft watercolour effect after firing. Andrea Hylands delicate, ultra modern form pushes the boundaries of her chosen materials. Hylands delicate, zigzag shapes, are spray painted with underglazes and sgraffito, scratchy marks are drawn through the spray painted areas. Sandra Black once Hylands mentor who introduced Hylands to bone china, produces delicate slipcast forms. Carved and pierced black porcelain, the patterns hark back to needlework patterns. Avi Amesbury's slipcast porcelain also uses patterns and found textures on and in the clay. A fundamental connection between memory and land has become an ongoing theme in Amesbury's work. "This process of making - constructing, stamping, painting and deconstruction, combined with slip casting gives the work it's unique style and the use of the earth's natural materials are intrinsic to the expression of the work."¹ Tita Berkman from Mexico carves the surface of her bowl form with Aztec like shapes. Berkman, like Amesbury and Thancoupie, uses oxides to give the carved and textured areas of their pots depth. Anthony Conway contrasts his slipcast modern forms with the more organic beauty of a crystalline glaze, growing and flowing down the surface of his work.

One of only two works in the collection that incorporates glass and clay together is Jenny Mulcahy's Inheritance from Mary Kathleen (Series II). Mulcahy fuses chunks of glass to the surface of her piece with multiple firings. Mulcahy's work is one of the crustiest in the exhibition, with contrasting textured and smooth elements and light and dark shades. The other being Ultramode Vase made by myself in the 1980's. A lead lighting technique known as copper foiling was used to reconstruct a vase shape I pulled apart after bisque firing. The work was then splashed and painted with hobby ceramic underglazes, glazed and reconstructed incorporating some glass shards as punky spikes of soft clear colour.

Errol Barnes, another Gold Coast local well known for his collaborations with artists such as Joe Furlonger and William Robinson, has thrown a large rounded stoneware vase with sgraffito decoration depicting the flora and fauna at first or last light of his immediate environment in Springbrook. Stephen Bowers also collaborates with a specialist wheel thrower. He prefers to leave the throwing of the pots and platters he decorates to an expert, enabling him the time needed to focus on his colourful and decorative theatre with an Australiana twist. Pippin Drysdale, the third ceramic artist in the exhibition who employs a specialist wheel thrower hails from Western Australia. Drysdale studies the vast and layered surface and subsurface structures of the West Australian landscape in Smoke Bush Traces 11. The surface of Drysdale's work looks to be undulating, as her vantage point when contemplating her Tanami Traces Series was far above the earths crust. On close investigation Drysdale's surface has a satin smooth flatness with velvet glaze qualities.

Both Lynda Draper and Stephen Benwell are masterful in their handbuilding techniques. The undulating pinched and glazed white surface of Draper's unusual Still Life, casts shadows like mountain ranges across and around her surfaces. Like Draper, Benwell leaves thumbprints and marks on the surface and inside his Large Vase giving the viewer hints and clues as to how the piece was built. Benwell's somewhat naive but masterful handbuilding technique is carried through to the decoration of the vase with an almost clumsy, simplistic painting technique in cobalt blue, soft pastels, brown, black and orange. Simple lines dashes and pattern work adorn his vase.

The humble teapot has always been a reliable staple for many production potteries over the centuries and three artists who give the teapot a little twist are American artist Scott Dooley, Sydney based Jenny Orchard and Canberra's Janet DeBoos. Dooley incorporates press-molded elements made to duplicate metal industrial objects such as mufflers, oil cans, silos and funnels. To add to his fascination with metal he has glazed his pot with a copper oxide rich glaze giving the finished pot the appearance of gunmetal. Jenny Orchard's slipcast earthenware creature teapot is glazed with a barium glaze giving it a matte appearance. Orchard is inspired by her favourite bushland near Mittagong and the Wombeyan caves in New South Wales. Orchard seeks to explore metaphor and metamorphosis; she merges both plant and animal in Bunyip Teapot II.

Janet DeBoos states, "To provide ourselves with beautiful objects as props in the domestic theatre, is to make the ordinary in our lives sublime."² I imagine using Solitary Pleasures tea set on a daily basis would indeed make the ordinary in our lives sublime. DeBoos, well known for her ongoing and extensive knowledge of glazes, has excelled with an ultra clear glaze over pure white porcelain this piece sparkles and beckons use.

Many ceramic artists don't see the need to explain their works as being anything more than functional objects that are a pleasure to produce, hold and use. The pleasure and obvious function of pot making quite often overrides the need for the potter to explain or theorize their place in society. This is perhaps one reason for the rating most ceramic works are given in the resale art market. Gwynn Hanssen Pigott, by aligning her thoughts and objects with the compositions of Giorgio Morandi a still life painter from Italy (1890-1964), has increased the importance of her functional objects. By placing her cups, bowls and bottles in still life groups she has ventured across the invisible line between fine art and craft. By doing so Hanssen Pigott has helped to raise the value and therefore the desire to collect ceramic works as investment art. Like Hanssen Pigott, Patsy Hely is another master at understatement. Although not evident in Three Jugs, Hely appropriates found objects. She enjoys incorporating wooden saucers, lids and metal trays in her quirky, mini installations, linking them to our recent past and a post-modern way of thinking. The finish of Three Jugs is raw but refined. The sandpapered outer skin contrasts with the smoother inner side of each jug. Lines have been scratched into both the outer and inner surfaces then filled with black underglaze. This line draws the eye to look inside each form. Once inside, the line and brown underglaze draws the eye back out again. It would seem Hely has approached the painting of the jug forms as a canvas rather than an object to decorate.

Bob Connery, a local of the Tweed River region, examines glaze trailing on a matte green crystal glaze over an unusual slab built stoneware shape titled Untitled (Miro series). Robert Rapson is mostly known for his ceramics although he has a painting background. His expressionist hand building and painting methodology is testament to this.

"I try to make ceramics move. Living in a port city has meant that ships come and go, their shapes and purpose changing over the years from passenger to freight, cruise ships to ferries. Transport as history: Momentum as art."³

In Paperlike 1, Florence Rometsch from Switzerland transforms the clay, giving the surface a delicate fragile paper like quality that looks ultimately fragile, yet to the touch is quite robust. Thancoupie, another ceramic artist who's prices have markedly improved in the last few years, draws inspiration from traditional legends of her Thainakuith culture and translates these traditional stories into contemporary visual images. Thancoupie works tirelessly for the Napranum community and she takes a particular interest in arts education for children and young people.

Joke ... an artist walks into a pub wearing one thong. The publican notices and asks. "Lost a thong?" The customer replies. "Nah mate, found one."⁴

This joke has been told and retold and has many incarnations, and seems to sum up Gerry Wedd's sense of Australian humour. Surfer and larrikin, Wedd draws inspiration from his close association to the ocean, cult like design and graphics. The ancient willow patterns juxtaposed in Wedd's work gives an interesting insight into a searching mind. Wedd's ceramic thongs are from an ongoing body of work investigating willow-pattern design. Willow pattern originated in England circa 1780. Thomas Turner of Caughley developed the Willow pattern from an original Chinese pattern called Mandarin. Wedd has taken elements of this design and transferred it to the humble Aussie thong to honour surfing identities of the 1970s. The Michael Peterson image was the defining image of the landmark 1972 surfing film, 'Morning of the Earth'.

Hideaki Suzuki from Japan explores the connection between the natural process and the method of coil building. Eternal Relic #2 looks as though it could have been found on the bottom of the Pacific in some ancient sunken ship. The surface has coral like texture, the form has mechanical implications.

Referred to once in the Sydney Morning Herald as a 'Techno Potter', Michael Keighery has been a long time advocate of implementing modern technology in the arts as a catalyst for lateral thinking.⁵ She didn't know much about love, but she knew what she liked continues that direction. Keighery's computer is as important to the outcome of this work as the clay it was made from. He uses digitally scanned bitmaps, or pixilated images converted to a series of straight lines enabling it to be read by a CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) milling machine. The CNC machine cuts the images into a material such as print-makers linoleum or Styrofoam this image is then used to produce a plaster mould or pressed into the clay with a slab roller the work is finished with sprayed underglazes and glazed.

From pinch pots to Computer Aided Design, functional to sculptural the tradition of making objects from clay fascinates the mind and records our histories in an ongoing evolution. We have learnt many historical facts from the ceramic treasures found in almost every civilisation since Neolithic people roamed the earth. The detailed histories of past civilisations discovered through the retrieval of these artefacts alone are reason enough to encourage and support the continuation of the making, exhibiting and use of ceramics.

Stephen Baxter 2006
Catalogue essay

Crust - Examining artists' approaches to clay surfaces is a Gold Coast City Art Gallery travelling exhibition and was curated from the permanent collection by Stephen Baxter.

The exhibition has been developed to acknowledge the contribution of all the people involved in the ongoing development of this collection and both ceramics in Australia and Internationally, and the importance of regional and national ceramic collections as part of Australia's rich and diverse ceramic histories. The exhibition showcases a small number of ceramic artists from the permanent collection that have contributed to ceramic arts nationally and or internationally and is testament to the Gallery's continued support for ceramics through the Gold Coast International Ceramic Art Award.

Banner images (left to right): Anthony Conway; Prue Morrison - The Johnnies; Scott Dooley; Greg Daly - Quad Vase; Michael Keighery - She didn't know much about love but she knew what she liked; Thancoupie.